Universities in South Africa and elsewhere in the world find themselves in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they (are expected to) strive towards displaying the typical image of the "classical" university, i.e. to be bastions of academic scholarship, and on the other, they are compelled to submit to an assessment system that is typical of modern management approaches and strategies. This trend can be partly ascribed to an effort to meet the demands of ever increasing numbers of students and the tacit expectation that universities should be managed like effective profit-making businesses. Government, as the primary funder of public universities, tends to prescribe the programmes that universities have to offer, how funds should be spent, and the qualitative and quantitative outputs expected. Universities in South Africa and elsewhere are expected to perform (performativity), to be productive, to be managed as businesses (managerialism), focusing on what works and what is effective (pragmatism), to be useful (utilitarianism), while also accommodating ever increasing numbers of students (massification). In due course, universities came to realise that they had lost much of their independence as a result of the control and supervision of external forces in exchange for financial support.